Thursday, 6 May 2010

Bored with World Cup trading cards! Try the new craze that is sweeping libraryland - librarian trading cards are here! Collect the full set of series 1 (academic librarians) and series 2 (public librarians) and stick them in the special albums available from SINTO. Swop them with your friends and play exciting games like Librarian Top Trumps!

Look out for rare editions and printing errors being traded on E-bay - such as the Martin Lewis inverted.

Wednesday, 5 May 2010

Do you have staff who have the potential to be the senior managers and leaders of tomorrow?Do you want to develop their skills and confidence to prepare them for this role in the future?Would you like to develop a framework to improve customer service?

Elenore Fisher (Rotherham Library Museums & Arts) and I have developed an innovative proposal to help library services achieve these goals. Using elements of "The Apprentice" (but without Sir Allen), this project will develop planning, team working and leadership skills through participation in a practical project.

Libraries would be invited to nominate staff members to take part in a cross-SINTO project group. The group would be set the task of producing a workable "mystery shopper" programme for libraries. This could incorporate a number of elements, from setting the remit/outcomes of the project, to working on specifications for mystery shopping templates, training of staff to take part, organising and evaluating the "visits" and coming up with proposals for actions.

Project members would attend a series of meetings and set up on-line facilities for communication and project development. They would be given a deadline to produce a final report.This is a development exercise and project members would be encouraged to use self-evaluation and reflective learning techniques. At the same time their work would be monitored by an external observer. Feedback and mentoring would be provided during and after the exercise.

This project is currently in development but I am inviting expressions of interest from SINTO member organisations. Let me know if:a) You are interested in the project as describedb) You are not interested in mystery shopping but would like to use this format for another project.

Depending on the feedback we will work this proposal up into a project that could be run early next year.